


A World, Silent

by ryssabeth



Series: Situational Irony [5]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Car Accident, Drunk Driver, Grief, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryssabeth/pseuds/ryssabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is quiet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A World, Silent

Enjolras’ world has been muted—the pounding of his feet against the pavement outside the hospital not even mananging to become a distant sound, much less one that demands his attention. The Trauma Center is empty when he arrives, except for the single soul in blue scrubs, his arms hanging limply by his sides.

“Joly, where is he.” His own voice sounds as if it’s coming through cotton—small and muffled. “Where is he, I need to see him, I—“

Joly steps before him, pressing a hand to Enjolras’ chest, holding it against his sternum for a moment, look at him with an expression that tells him everything he needs to—(his brain shuts off, goes dark, and mutes the world again).

“When he got here, he was conscious. His pelvis had been crushed between the front fender of an old pick-up truck of American brand and a telephone pole. The internal organs from the bellybutton down were ruptured and bruised. He bled internally. He spoke to me for a moment and then he crashed.” He keeps speaking, a monotonous trail of words that Enjolras doesn’t want to here anymore. “But he was resuscitated. He did not regain consciousness. And then he crashed again. And was resuscitated. And then he crashed again, moments ago, and was declared dead.”

“Where is he,” Enjolras asks again. Or he thinks he does. The cotton has gotten too thick for words.

Joly’s shoulders sag forward and he leads him through double doors that swing both ways, down a hall and through another set. A room—dark and cold with no equipment—is on the left, and that is where Joly stops. Grantaire lies there, on the bed, and Enjolras steps in to see him, dragging a plastic chair from near the door along behind him, sitting at the head of the gurney, gently pressing a hand to hire forehead and brushing the hair away from his eyes.

(They’re open, staring at nothing.)

Joly disappears and returns with quiet steps, and Enjolras looks up, blinking with dry eyes at the plastic bags that are held before him. “These,” he says quietly, “are what Grantaire had on him. It’s a wonder that his phone wasn’t damaged.”

The hand that isn’t attending to Grantaire (splayed there, shirt cut open and lower body caked in congealed blood) reaches for the bags—one with his phone, cleaned, the other with his wallet.

“Who hit him?”

This question makes Joly uncomfortable. “I don’t know—a drunk driver, I think. The paramedics said the cops took him away.”

Enjolras lays the bags near his feet and doesn’t say anything else, brushing the hair away from Grantaire’s forehead as it keeps falling into his face.

His skin is still warm, despite the chill of the room around him.

-

Sometime later, Joly returns—Enjolras doesn’t remember him moving, or leaving. But, apparently, he did. (The world makes no sounds, for a moment—but that’s just Enjolras. The globe upon which he sits keeps turning, as if nothing at all has gone wrong.)

“Enjolras, it’s time to move him.”

He looks up, his eyes still too dry for the situation, every nerve-ending feeling raw and weeping. “No.”

“Enjolras—” Joly’s wringing his hands. He only does that when he’s nervous.

“No,” he says pushing Grantaire’s hair away from his forehead over and over and over again (he never brushes it properly, not really, and it tangles often). “No. He said he’d be right back. Grantaire doesn’t lie to me—he doesn’t. He doesn’t lie to me. He said he’d be right back.”

Joly backs away and ducks his head.

Enjolras waits for Grantaire’s return to him.

Because he doesn’t lie.

-

Grantaire’s skin has gone cold. It’s smooth and chilled and not at all like him. It’s pale and waxen and his curls are flat and his lips are thin and white. His eyes are open and he’s not breathing because that’s what people do when they die.

They _don’t_.

He’s been like this for an hour, or two.

(But Grantaire doesn’t lie to him, and he’ll be right back, right back, just in a moment and—)

The tears don’t come with any fanfare. They’re not introduced by sobs or shortness of breath. They come and they fall and they keeping falling and shit no they won’t stop—

( _“One of these days, you’re going to cry during the Pianist and I’m going to wipe away all the snot and tears and spit and you’re going to be just as beautiful as ever.”_

 _“I think you may have just sickened me.”_ )

Enjolras brushes Grantaire’s hair away from his forehead.

He won’t be able to see when he gets back unless he does.

-

Grantaire isn’t coming back. His hands have been stiff and unresponsive since the sky turned light purple, and he isn’t coming back. He isn’t going to be bursting through the door at any moment with the film and he won’t say _Hey there, Sunshine, sorry it took so long, I eventually decided as we all knew I would on—_

He won’t ever say anything at all.

Because dead people don’t talk. They sit there, dead, and they don’t move. Or breathe or blink or love anymore, because they’re _dead_.

Enjolras feels fingers in his hair and he looks up to find Grantaire standing above him, a sad stupid smile on his face.

( _“Hey there, Sunshine. I’m sorry it took so long, I eventually decided as we all knew I would on—“_ )

“The Pianist, yes,” Enjolras nods. “You lied to me, you know.”

( _“For the record, it wasn’t my intention to lie to you. But I’ll be back soon, okay. Just having some hip problems.”_ )

This is untrue. “You meant to lie to me just then.”

Fingers—warm and calloused and alive—splay against his cheek, dragging across the smear of tears there. ( _“I did mean to lie to you just then.”_ )

“Why did you lie to me?”

( _“I’m sorry.”_ )

Grantaire half-smiles, leaning down to press his nose against Enjolras’ cheek—because occasionally he likes to do that, a kiss without his lips—and the gesture pulls a sob out of his chest with two fist, ripping it out of his throat, tearing the lining of his body apart with its force.

“I didn’t pick a—if I has just chosen something— _fuck_ —you wouldn’t have puttered around like you _always_ do when you don’t have—“ the world is too small for all this, too small for this destruction that’s falling upon him in torrents.

( _“Hey now, hey. Hey, Apollo,_ listen _. It’s not—shh, okay—let’s go home. It’s fine, it’s all fine.”_ )

“I can’t go home,” he says, fighting for air where there is none. “I can’t go—I can’t go home, Grantaire, because everything—your pictures and your—I can’t—“

( _“We can move today. I’ll help you pack. You’ve been hating that the rent’s been going up anyway.”_ )

A smile. Understanding.

“You will?”

( _“Yeah, of course. Most of my books are already in stacks anyway, shouldn’t be too hard to put in boxes. And if we can save up enough, we’ll get a bigger flat than the one we have now—It’ll be fine.”_ )

“Okay—“ his insides clench. “Okay.”

( _“Question?”_ )

“What?”

( _“Can we keep the sofa?”_ )

Enjolras tries to laugh. It’s a sob instead. It echoes around the walls of the cold room, the chill biting into his bones with unforgiving teeth.

He reaches for his phone in the pocket of his coat, the relator who found them this flat already in mind to help him find another on such short notice.

But that’s not who he ends up calling.

(The phone beside his feet rings. And he cannot bear to hang up.)

-

_“Hello, you’ve reached Grantaire. If you meant to call me, leave your name and number, and if this is an accident, it’s okay, it happens, just never mention it again, and if this is Enjolras, I love you. And also, I’ve embarrassed you—“_


End file.
